X
    Categories: 2021

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 03/25/2021

                                        Thursday, 

Russian Language To Get Official Status In Nagorno-Karabakh


NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Russian soldiers of the peacekeeping force man a checkpoint 
on a road outside Stepanakert, November 26, 2020

Elected representatives in Nagorno-Karabakh have approved a proposal to make 
Russian the Armenian-populated territory’s second official language.

The measure was proposed last month by three of the five political parties 
represented in Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament. One of them, Free Fatherland, is 
led by Arayik Harutiunian, the region’s ethnic Armenian leader.

Earlier this month Harutiunian’s administration endorsed a relevant bill drafted 
by the three parties, paving the way for its passage.

The bill envisaging amendments to the region’s laws on the language as well as 
television and radio was passed with a vote of 27-0, with two abstentions.

It cites Nagorno-Karabakh’s history of “cultural, military and economic links” 
with Russia and says that giving Russian an official status would deepen them.

Its proponents have also argued that this would facilitate communication with 
Russian soldiers and aid workers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh after last year’s 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Russia’s presence in Nagorno-Karabakh increased dramatically after Moscow 
brokered a ceasefire agreement that stopped the six-week war on November 10. The 
deal led to the deployment of about 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops in 
Nagorno-Karabakh as well as along a land corridor connecting the disputed 
territory to Armenia.

The peacekeepers have helped tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians, who fled 
the fighting, to return to their homes.

But some Karabakh lawmakers have voiced objections to the bill. They include 
Metakse Hakobian of the opposition Artarutyun (Justice) party, one of the bill’s 
three co-sponsors.

Hakobian said on March 12 that the proposed legislation needed to be amended to 
guarantee the supremacy of the Armenian language. “Russian should have more of a 
working than official status and the two languages should not be equated,” she 
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service then.

Several Karabakh academics have also spoken out against making Russian an 
official language. One of them, Yana Avanesian, said the bill in question was 
“unfounded” in its current form.

Free Fatherland’s Aram Harutiunian, one of the authors of the bill, insisted 
that Armenian will remain Nagorno-Karabakh’s main official language, while 
Russian will be used “when necessary.”

The bill passed by Nagorno-Karabakh’s elected representatives will become law 
upon signing by the region’s leader.

Still in February, Azerbaijan, which considers Nagorno-Karabakh to be its 
territory, condemned the region’s plans to give Russian an official status.

President Ilham Aliyev said at a press conference on February 26 that “there can 
only be one official language in Azerbaijan – the Azeri language.”

Earlier, the Kremlin described the matter as “an internal affair.”

“This is not a subject of talks, it is a de-facto situation when people speak 
Russian both in Azerbaijan and Armenia,” the Russian president’s spokesperson 
Dmitri Peskov said on December 2, according to TASS.

“This is an internal affair of any country – both Azerbaijan and Armenia,” he 
added.



Security Council Secretary Denies Army Chief Urged End To War Early On

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armen Grigorian, secretary of the Security Council of Armenia. 

Armen Grigorian, secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, continues to insist 
that former chief of the Armed Forces’ General Staff Onik Gasparian did not call 
for a cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh on the fourth day of the war 
with Azerbaijan despite his claim.

Talking to media after a government session on Thursday, Grigorian said that for 
the first time the issue of stopping the war was raised at the Security Council 
on October 19, which was the 23rd day of the hostilities.

On November 17, a week after Armenia signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire with 
Azerbaijan to put an end to a 44-day war in which Armenian forces suffered a 
defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh, Gasparian claimed that on the fourth day of the war 
(September 30), during a Security Council meeting, he reported about Armenian 
casualties and presented an assessment of the situation in the armed forces.

He said then that he noted that “it is necessary to take measures to stop the 
war within the next two or three days, otherwise our resources will be exhausted 
in a short time and that with each day we will have more unfavorable conditions 
for the negotiation process.”

The secretary of the Security Council today repeated his recent public comment 
on that, saying that it was during the October 19 Security Council meeting that 
the statement about “resources being exhausted” was made and the idea of 
“stopping the war” within the next two or three days was expressed.

“By the way, leaders of the parliamentary opposition factions also attended that 
Security Council meeting,” Grigorian said.

Grigorian first addressed the matter in an interview with the Civilnet news 
website on March 12. But his statement was then taken with skepticism by 
representatives of the opposition that challenged its timing that coincided with 
the controversial dismissal of Gasparian as chief of the Armed Forces’ General 
Staff.

Gasparian was relieved of his duties after he and four dozen generals and 
high-ranking officers on February 25 called for Pashinian’s resignation, 
accusing him of putting Armenia “on the brink of collapse” following last year’s 
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Grigorian said today that the authorities addressed Gasparian’s November 17 
remarks “not when he demanded [Pashinian’s] resignation, but when he had been 
relieved of his duties.”

“There is a big difference. It is not that when he issued that statement, we 
said it in response. It’s been a long time before I talked about it,” the 
secretary of the Security Council said.

When asked about why the war was not stopped earlier, Grigorian reminded that 
there were at least three public efforts on that, apparently referring to three 
ceasefire agreements announced by Armenia and Azerbaijan after talks mediated 
separately by Russia, France and United States.

But Grigorian said that efforts to stop the war failed not because of the 
Armenian side, but because of the onslaught of Azerbaijan and active involvement 
of Turkey and jihadists.

“Stopping a war is not a unilateral action,” Grigorian added.

The secretary of the Security Council said that the government has no intention 
to put the whole blame for the defeat in the war on the army.

“We have no intention to shift the blame onto the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces 
should even prepare a report on the war and do it under the leadership of Onik 
Gasparian. If we wanted to put the blame on the Armed Forces, we would prepare 
that report ourselves,” Grigorian said.

Meanwhile, in another development it became known today that citing incorrect 
grounds, an administrative court in Yerevan had not accepted the lawsuit of the 
former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Gasparian against Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian and President Armen Sarkissian regarding his dismissal. 
Gasparian’s lawyer said the decision will be appealed at the Civil Court of 
Appeal.



Armenia Toughens Penalties For High Treason, Espionage

        • Artak Khulian

The opposition Prosperous Armenia faction in the Armenian parliament (archive 
photo).

Armenian lawmakers on Thursday unanimously adopted amendments to the penal code 
setting tougher penalties for high treason and espionage.
The bill brought to parliament by the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) 
makes high treason a crime punishable by a life sentence or 15-20 years of 
imprisonment, with or without confiscation of property, and provides for 12-20 
years of imprisonment for espionage.

Under the currently applied articles of the Criminal Code high treason in 
Armenia is punishable by 10 to 15 years of imprisonment with or without 
confiscation of property, and espionage is punishable by 8 to 15 years of 
imprisonment.

Originally the BHK-drafted bill proposed only life imprisonment as a punishment 
for high treason.

The bill was adopted in the second and final reading with 112 votes. No member 
of the 132-seat parliament voted against it or abstained.



Armenian PM Denies Contradictions In Comments About Fighter Jets

        • Naira Nalbandian

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian being briefed on the technical 
capabilities of Su-30SM fighter jets inside one of them. (The photo was released 
by the prime minister’s press service on December 27, 2019)

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian sees no contradictions between his comments about 
why Armenia did not purchase missiles for Russian fighter jets to be able to use 
them in its recent war with Azerbaijan and his prewar post on social media about 
the multirole aircraft “successfully testing missiles.”

During his March 20 visit to Armenia’s Aragatsotn province, addressing a rally 
in one of the villages, Pashinian said that Yerevan purchased Russian Su-30SM 
fighters in May 2020, but did not manage to purchase missiles for them before 
the start of the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh in September.

Meanwhile, it was still in December 2019 that the press service of the prime 
minister and the Ministry of Defense officially announced that the Armenian 
Armed Forces had been “equipped with Su-30SM multifunctional fighters.”

In July last year, Pashinian wrote on Facebook that the Su-30SMs “successfully 
tested missiles.”

Opposition members have accused the prime minister of lying to the public with 
“contradictory statements.”

Meanwhile, in his answer to a related question asked by a pro-government 
lawmaker in parliament on March 24, Pashinian denied any contradictions between 
his comments.

He explained that since “fighter aircraft are ultra-modern powerful weapons.., 
it is obvious that manufacturers of aircraft and missiles of different 
modifications are not the same entities.”

“In other words, they are not produced in one place, and, therefore, are not 
purchased in one place, but they are purchased from different entities. Su-30SM 
fighter jets arrived in Armenia in May 2020 and, yes, training flights were 
carried out, and missiles that were already in the arsenal of the Armenian Armed 
Forces were used. In a specific military situation decisions on their use or 
non-use were made in accordance with the extent to which the available 
ammunition allows these aircraft to fulfill the combat missions assigned to 
them. And what I said in the village of Ohanavan and what I said earlier did not 
contradict each other. Unfortunately, during the war we did not have time to 
purchase all those necessary accessories, missiles that would make it possible 
to use the ultra-modern Su-30SMs for their intended purpose and in accordance 
with their power,” Pashinian said.

Pashinian did not explain the discrepancy between the December 2019 press 
statement from his office showing photographs of him and then-Defense Minister 
David Tonoyan at an airfield watching demonstration flights of Su-30SM fighters 
and boarding the cockpit of one of the aircraft, and his statement that the 
Su-30SM fighter jets arrived in Armenia in May 2020.

Opposition Bright Armenia lawmaker Ani Samsonian seized upon that, accusing 
Pashinian of lying again.

“When will the government stop lying, manipulating and misleading the public?” 
she charged in her question to Pashinian.

The prime minister did not answer the opposition lawmaker’s question himself. 
Instead his deputy Tigran Avinian said: “A full answer on Su-30SM aircraft was 
given, there is nothing that I can add on that.”

Earlier this month Pashinian effectively retracted his claim that the Armenian 
army’s most advanced Russian-made Iskander missiles seriously malfunctioned 
during the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The retraction came after a storm of 
criticism from Russian pro-government lawmakers and pundits, who accused the 
Armenian prime minister of incompetence and deceit.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

 


Garnik Tadevosian: